


Murna

by constantine



Category: SUTCLIFF Rosemary - Works, The Mark of the Horse Lord - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Fanart, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 01:57:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5690188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantine/pseuds/constantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quick sketch/design of Murna, ch. 8.<br/>Pretty flagrant borrowing from Waterhouse, as he is the acknowledged master of painting unhappy people holding chalices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Murna

Quick sketch of Murna, figuring some things out.

I do not quibble with anything in this book, because Sutcliff in her infinite wisdom set it 'quite a bit before 258 A.D.', so that's an argument-ender right there. Also, there's magic in it? So I assumed that her dress would be of the shoulder-pinned, sleeveless type at this period, and since her arms seem to be bare to show the bracelets, and that's about it.

The cup is tiny because I really wanted to go full Waterhouse's  _Circe Invidiosa,_ with her two-foot basin, and then couldn't stop worrying about whether you could find a piece of amber big enough. (I also couldn't make that pose and angle work with Murna's head held up, and...didn't want to draw her head down because we tend to read a lot into that that doesn't always sit right with me. But that doesn't have to do with the cup.) I did some Googling and pulled up the Hove hoard cup, which is from Bronze Age Wessex, but which I thought Sutcliff might have been aware of, and is around 8.9 centimeters in diameter, so this is about half that again. On consideration, a one-king serving of hallucinogens would look a bit silly in a cup much larger.

The Hove cup is currently at the Getty, and it and a gallery of worked amber artifacts from around the world can be seen together here: http://museumcatalogues.getty.edu/amber/intro/8/

 

(Edit note: The...bubbles...are a accident that may or may not have involved my hot chocolate, and not an ill-advised photo-editing decision on my part.)


End file.
